The point? Awful as the defeat seemed at the time, it barely even registered among the countless bracket prognosticators across the grand interwebs. Heck, Andy Glockner of Sports Illustrated actually thought the Huskies were in better position after the weekend than they were before it.

And ESPN.com’s Joe Lunardi dropped Washington to a No. 10 seed, though still thought the Huskies were safe enough to avoid the “last four in” category.

To recap: the Huskies lost in rather unimpressive fashion on Saturday, announced on Tuesday that Overton is banned from the Pac-10 Tournament, added that senior forward Justin Holiday might not play due to a concussion, and Lunardi still saw it fit to move them up a spot?

Lorenzo Romar must give one hell of a press conference.

Either that, or the Huskies just aren’t in as dire of straits as we all think. According to the Bracket Project, which attempts to average each and every known bracket projection on the Internet, all 82 brackets included have the Huskies in the tournament field. Washington’s average seed is a No. 10, which is where Lunardi had them before their big push over the last 72 hours.

Weak Pac-10? Weak RPI? Only three quality wins? Still not enough to bump the Huskies from the field, if you want to believe the alleged soothsayers.

Now, I’ve never been big on these projections. They’re fun for fans to look at, and the more legitimate analysts usually know what they’re talking about. But obviously, none of these people are on the selection committee, and there are teams every year that get excluded after most everyone thought they’d be invited.

And maybe we should use Lunardi’s promotion of UW as evidence that these things should just be thrown out the window.

Still, if 82 of 82 people willing to put this much effort into a 64-team field projection think the Huskies will be invited to the NCAA Tournament, can one game really change that much?

Another thing to think about is that the field is expanded from 65 teams to 68 teams this year, so there’s room for three more bubble teams that would have really had to sweat it out otherwise.

So, does the Huskies’ game against Washington State on Thursday really matter?

In terms of momentum, seeding, confidence, sure, yeah, it does.

But I think Washington will be invited to the NCAA Tournament regardless of Thursday’s outcome.